Serbia Votes at a Record Pace as Turnout Nears 65 Percent and Polls Stay Open Until 8 p.m.

Serbians are voting in numbers they have not produced in a generation. By 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, nearly 65 percent of the country's 6.4 million registered voters had cast a ballot, election officials told AFP, France 24 reported. That already beats the just over 61 percent recorded at the 1993 parliamentary election, and the polls stay open until 8 p.m.

The snap vote pits President Aleksandar Vucic's Serbian Progressive Party, in power for 14 years, against the Students' List, a movement born in the street. Results are not in, and nothing in this report should be read as one. This is a turnout story, written while the booths are still open.

How high is turnout in Serbia's election?

The early-afternoon figure was already striking. The BBC's Nick Thorpe reported that 46 percent of voters had cast ballots by 2 p.m., a record for that hour and, in his words, nearly a million more people than at the same point in the December 2023 election, in a report carried by Yahoo. Four hours later the figure had climbed almost 19 points.

Polls close at 8 p.m. and first results are expected about two hours later, according to the BBC. Commentators quoted there suggested that a final turnout of 65 percent or more would favour the students, which is why the number is being watched so closely tonight.

Why is this election happening now?

The vote grew out of nearly two years of protests that began after a concrete canopy collapsed at the Novi Sad railway station in 2024 and killed 16 people. Many Serbians blamed corruption for the disaster. The demonstrations became some of the largest in the country since the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and the students' demands moved from a transparent investigation to early elections.